WORLD'S FINEST STORIES

If there's such a thing as a DC 'canon' - a collection of its most significant stories - it's this list of the ten best DC Comics tales of all time.

Even though we try to be objective here at Newsarama, sometimes it’s hard to be maintain the line when formulating a list like this (not to mention agree with one another on what belongs here) – which is why we left the choices up to you, our loyal readers.

Through an open poll, we asked you, the Newsarama readers, to vote on your favorite DC Comics story ever written. With no rules and no limits, you placed your votes and decided on the definitive DC canon through the most democratic means possible.

So DC Universe, if you're listening, you might want to make sure these ten stories are available on your service soon.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW?

2 of 12

How do you eulogize the history of a character in two short issues? That’s the question the Julius Schwartz sought to answer, and he hired Alan Moore to do it.

With the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths effectively ending the Silver Age, Schwartz imagined that his last two issues editing the Superman line were to be the last in human history. In two short issues, Alan Moore created a road map through Superman’s history that included his most fearsome villains and his closest friends.

And ultimately, he gives the man who has everything the one thing he lacked: a perfect ending. Part of the reason that this is such a pitch-perfect tribute to the Man of Steel is that legendary artist Curt Swan handled the art. He had been drawing Superman since 1948 and from the opening letters “This is an imaginary story” to that final, knowing wink from “Jordan Elliott,” this one feels like a Superman story through and through.

It honors the legacy of one of the world’s greatest heroes while simultaneously thumbing its nose at the continuity changes that were to take place.

- Pierce Lydon

THE RETURN OF BARRY ALLEN

3 of 12

In the wake of Crisis On Infinite Earths, Wally West became the new Flash, graduating from sidekick to superhero with the death of his mentor Barry Allen. Wally’s transition wasn’t without growing pains, however. He failed to gel with readers until Mark Waid began his landmark run on Flash, giving Wally the depth that his predecessor had often lacked.

While it’s hard to argue that there was ever a lull in Waid’s original Flash run, "The Return of Barry Allen" is likely its apex. In this story, Wally is confronted with the return of the deceased Barry Allen – a story that, under another writer’s pen, might have been heartfelt schmaltz, but for Waid, was an examination of Wally’s ascent to true heroism, and the moment that solidified him as the one true Flash.

Over the course of six issues, Wally and Barry struggle to share the mantle of the Flash until the truth of the return is revealed. Written in a conversational style reminiscent of Wally recounting the tale to a friend, it’s as much a conversation between Waid and readers about legacy and heroism as it is between the characters on the page.

"The Return of Barry Allen" is something of an unsung pioneer of modern comic book, blending an everyman perspective with a modern narration and a grasp of classic ideals that make it one of the best examples of late 20th century superhero storytelling, and one of the best DC Comics stories of all time.

- George Marston

THE JUDAS CONTRACT

4 of 12

When "The Judas Contract" began in New Teen Titans #42, the surprise wasn’t Terra’s apparent heel turn. Marv Wolfman and George Perez had spent nearly a year introducing Terra to the Titans and making her part of the group and then let the readers in on her terrible secret months before the Titans would learn her true nature.

The shock of that issue was just how totally and thoroughly she and Deathstroke owned the Titans because she knew all of their secrets at that point. At the height of their creative energies, Wolfman and Perez’s stories were about the unique individuals that made up the Titans. All of the characters are just so strong that the introduction of a wildcard like Terra to the team was a great way to shake up the team.

"The Judas Contract" also focuses on the story of Dick Grayson versus Deathstroke as the two warriors maneuver their allies to counter the other’s forces, culminating in the one-time Robin’s transition to his new superheroic persona as Nightwing.

"The Judas Contract" proclaims that as Grayson moves out of his mentor’s shadow, the Titans are much more than just a Justice League junior varsity team.

- Scott Cederlund

SINESTRO CORPS WAR

5 of 12

For years, the Green Lantern Corps stood as the universe’s best and brightest, defending the galaxy through the use of the most powerful weapon in the cosmos — their emerald power rings. But with this action-packed space opera epic, Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons, along with A-list artists Ivan Reis, Patrick Gleason, and Ethan Van Sciver, showed that Hal Jordan and company that they weren’t the only ringslingers in town.

Featuring the debut of the fear-powered Sinestro Corps, "Sinestro Corps War" was a pivotal moment for the Green Lanterns as both an organization and as a franchise, with a murderer’s row of iconic DC supervillains thrown against the team, including Parallax, Cyborg Superman, Superboy-Prime, and the Anti-Monitor himself. Yet this book also had key moments of the Green Lanterns rising to this unprecedented challenge, with beats such as John Stewart trading interstellar sniper fire with the hermit crab-like creature known as Bedovian, the Guardians revoking their eons-old edict against killing, or the promotion of Daxamite Green Lantern Sodam Yat as the new, all-powerful Ion as he tackles the unstoppable Kryptonian Superboy-Prime.

Culminating with some huge battles and personal redemptions, "Sinestro Corps War" also led to a greater expansion of the Green Lantern universe as a whole, hinting at the rise of five more corps based on the colors of the emotional spectrum.

This explosion of creativity and action has not only solidified "Sinestro Corps War" as one of the greatest Green Lantern stories, but one of the greatest DC Comics stories in history.

- David Pepose

THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS

6 of 12

Thirty years after its original four-part release, Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley’s The Dark Knight Returns is undeniably one of the most powerful Batman stories ever told. A violent tale acted out behind a backdrop of Cold War paranoia and nightmares of a teenage uprising, The Dark Knight Returns follows Batman as he comes out of retirement to wage war against a Gotham City who will no longer tolerate one man taking the law into his own hands.

Miller's Bruce Wayne is a silver-haired cowboy dropped into an ’80s dystopia, a burly bag of aching bones who finds himself physically outmatched by a new generation of vicious gangs and the return of his arch-nemesis the Joker. Finally, as nuclear war breaks out between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union, it's up to Superman to take down a Batman hell-bent on cleaning up Gotham's streets.

Although written and illustrated when Miller was just 29, The Dark Knight Returns feels like the work of a much older man. It's a satirical look at the evolving media landscape of the 1980s, when TV became more youth-oriented and even the news began to turn towards entertainment, as exemplified by the many talking heads who narrate the book's events in ways that benefit their own twisted agendas.

Although time and countless issues of a harder-edged Batman have since softened the original impact of Frank Miller's pessimistic take on the World's Greatest Detective, its place in comic book history cannot be understated. For that reason alone, The Dark Knight Returns deserves a place in every reader's library.

- Oscar Maltby

DC: THE NEW FRONTIER

7 of 12

In a modern era of cynicism in comic books, the late Darwyn Cooke was able to showcase the latent optimistic potential of the DC Universe in the now classic DC: The New Frontier.

The story is everything that Watchmen and DKR aren’t, with DC’s marquee characters exhibiting their best traits and inspiring the world and readers alike to fight towards a better tomorrow at the dawn of the nuclear age. Cooke captures an America fresh from World War II and before a cultural shift where the only way comic books could be respected is if they were dragged through the gutter first.

New Frontier is unabashed in its love of the super hero as an icon for what humanity could strive towards. Often under-served characters like Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman and Adam Strange are given their best interpretations here. Cooke simultaneously gets to the core of these characters and, through this, reinvents them at the same time.

Cooke’s art is a perfect marriage of influences from of DC’s storied history- from Jack Kirby to the Fleischer Superman cartoon and Batman: The Animated Series. Even the creator’s art style brings out the best of DC’s Silver Age with each hero smiling into sunrise in a post-war art deco style.

Darwyn Cooke’s magnum opus, DC: The New Frontier is a portrait of DC Comics' best side and embodies all the courage and hope that these characters represent in a perfect love letter to the Silver Age of comic books.

- Jake Baumgart

ALL-STAR SUPERMAN

8 of 12

Grant Morrison’s intent with this 12-issue miniseries, one that took almost three years to finish its original publication run, was to create a Superman story that was both fresh and timelessly classic. He does so by tasking the simple question of how Superman would spend his last days on Earth.

In a way that’s an antidote to his previous exploitative death of the 1990s, Superman is seen completing a series of tasks, or 'trials' in the most mythical (or perhaps even biblical) sense. It’s a narrative that celebrates everything we have every loved about the Last Son of Krypton. Morrison funnels his encyclopedic knowledge of the Man of Steel into a singular story in a way that never feels didactic, allowing cameos and appearances from virtually every era of Superman comics without ever needing to crack open the Multiverse to do so.

Stripping the character down to his most heroic of essentials, Frank Quitely makes a career-defining turn on the book, casting the hero as a super relaxed version of near omnipotent alien. From the barrel-chested Superman, a logical extension of what the ultimate human being would look like, through to the polar opposite in the vulnerable Lex Luthor, Quitely has a way of capturing both the majesty and the humanity of these characters.

All-Star Superman remains a quintessential Superman story for new readers through to those with much deeper long-boxes.

- Richard Gray

THE GREAT DARKNESS SAGA

9 of 12

Legion of Super-Heroes's "The Great Darkness Saga" is one of the oldest stories on this countdown, and hasn’t seen much reference in the modern DC Universe, but it stands steadfast as an example of what DC stories can accomplish when they combine the classic with the nouveau and find common ground in disparate ideas.

"The Great Darkness Saga" tells the tale of Darkseid, dark lord of Apokolips, making his way into the 31st century. The story brought together numerous villains of the Legion of Super-Heroes, uniting them with aspects of the 20th Century DC Universe. It defined the era of the Legion, and set the stage for what came for years after.

"The Great Darkness Saga" is not just the highlight of Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen’s run on Legion of Super-Heroes, it’s one of the greatest tales of the modern DC Universe, and a prime reason so many fans still clamor for the Legion even when they aren’t part of DC’s line.

-George Marston

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS

10 of 12

DC's continuity leading up into the 1980s was rich with nostalgia but convoluted with inconsistencies, leading to the first real mega-event in the company’s history: Crisis on Infinite Earths, which shook DC to its core, remixing its timeline and heralding the beginning of a continuity-shuffling practice repeated every decade since.

Introducing the literally earth-shattering threat of the Anti-Monitor, this Crisis threw together dozens of heroes from across the Multiverse, and was the scene of the then-shocking deaths of Barry Allen and Supergirl (Clearly a lesson that good heroes never die — they just move to the CW). Marv Wolfman and George Perez juggled a universe full of characters, packing together more panels and action in one issue than many modern series fit into a trade. Earths lived and Earths died, resulting in a true epic that has withstood the test of time 30 years later.

The legacy of Crisis also cannot be overlooked, with the streamlined continuity establishing Wally West as the new Flash, and launching into well-received series such as John Byrne’s Man of Steel, Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One and George Perez’s Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals.

-Lan Pitts

KINGDOM COME

11 of 12

Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ tale of the old guard of DC heroes facing obsolescence in a world protected by younger and more vicious generation of superheroes is just as powerful now as it was when it was first published in 1996.

Thanks to Waid’s understanding of the titanic personalities he handles, his presentation that makes them feel human instead of lofty gods, and Ross’ gorgeous painted visuals, Kingdom Come is often the first book mentioned when people are asked what their favorite DC stories are.

While Kingdom Come stands as an emotional testament to Mark Waid’s almost superhuman knowledge of the DCU and Alex Ross’ immense talent behind a brush, it also rewards readers who find themselves coming back again and again to Waid and Ross’ dystopian Elseworlds series. Whether it is the fact that Ross used the image of his own father, a reverend himself, as the inspiration for point-of-view character Norman McCay or Waid’s cameo-filled final showdown that still reveals new heroes amid the din of battle, this story feels new with every reread despite being on shelves for nearly 20 years.

Kingdom Come is a classic in every sense of the word, and will continue to stand as the best, most engaging story that DC has produced.